to the extent that fema, which is not a constitutional federal entity, usurps the founding and funding of the national guard, which is a consitutional federal entity...

and government oversight and control of healthcare, for which there is no constitutional basis, inpinges and infringes on the ability of the healtcare freemarket to assimilate as it would in any other supply/demand market...

i think you have your answer...they can't...but..."imagine hopey changey"courtesy tam...

For eight years, FEMA has been in the control of people who claimed that federal government is useless, and who set out to make it so.

See, e.g., the Katrina response. See also hiring a guy who couldn't run a race course to run our national emergency response. (See also hiring a guy who couldn't run a baseball team to run our nation.)

Under people who believed there needed to be a competent Federal Emergency Management Administration, there was a competent Federal Emergency Management Administration.

OTOH, what you are suggesting is that as long as the "right" people are in charge everything will be hunky dory. However, as soon as the "wrong" people end up in charge everything will be horrible. In that case, why would you desire gov't run health care? Since it is a given that the "wrong" people will at some poin in time be voted into office.

Ankhorite do you also support all the OTHER things that Bush Co. has done, like shredding the constitution, as long as a "progressive" leader full of hope and change is in the office? Would you feel better about all the eavesdropping, and people disappearing in the middle of the night, and indefinite detention? There have been some that had those things as well as a fervent quest for perfection in areas such as health, and the environment, and anti-smoking laws, and animal rights...and people who paid attention in history call those people....

wait for it.

NAZIS!

Ya know, maybe a nationalized health care system might be a good thing. Given the value placed on life, especially of the elderly and terminal (read, their tax money has been made, and their life has been full and productive and now they can't produce nearly enough to feed the ever growing government system) some young child might have had the attention that the old and irrational Kennedy had received instead.

Well, it won't be like that, honest. It'd be more like the VA medical system, expanded to cover everyone.

Oh, and the "Katrina disaster?" Good thing Nagin and Blanco are off the hook. FEMA would have had a lot less to do had not LA been run by corrupt incompetents. Just look next door at MS.

And as Gregg said, a system that only works if the "right people" are in charge is a pretty piss poor system. Bureaucracies were invented to ensure performance regardless of the personnel in place. FEMA is just a guaranteed loser regardless of who is in charge. A big enough disaster, especially one compounded by Nagin like criminal malfeasance, is going to overwhelm any response organization.

Look at China - you think their problems stem from not enough bureaucracy?